Directing traffic to your website through SEO or social media  is about getting customers on the right road – the road to your website. The purpose of conversion optimization is to keep them on the road so that they reach the final destination  - conversion.

The problem is that most websites have glitches that cause their customers to halt the conversion process. Think of them as broken bridges. If the customer can’t cross the bridge, he’ll take a detour and perhaps end up on another company’s website.

Here’s 3 ways to build bridges and avoid glitches on your website.

●      Bridge #1: Usability

Each page of your website should be easy to navigate and easy to operate. Usability issues include buttons that don’t work, broken links, dead-end pages, and confusing navigation.

Test your webpage out with people who aren’t familiar with it in order to find out where usability problems arise.

●      Bridge #2: Clarity

Your website may function correctly, but does it also communicate clearly? The purpose of each page should be immediately apparent upon entrance.

Clarity problems arise with hard-to-find call to actions, poorly written copy, misleading headlines, and lengthy paragraphs. Don’t make your customers struggle to figure out what they should do next. They won’t, and you’ll lose them to the competition.

●      Bridge #3: Appearance

Appearance doesn’t just refer to creating an aesthetically pleasing website, although that is important. It also encompasses elements such as clutter, white space, placement, and eye tracking.

Each element on the page should be placed purposefully in order to increase online sales with conversion optimization.

Avoid cluttering your pages with too many images and keep enough white space between elements so they don’t appear crowded.

Also, place important elements such as your call to action in the typical line of sight, which begins at the upper left corner and progresses down to the lower right.

Of course, seeking to increase online sales with conversion optimization will require you to dig much more deeply into each of these areas, but remember that your overall goal is to remove obstacles from the path of the user so that he’ll remain on the road until he reaches the ultimate destination: conversion.

Website redesign for usability is really an abstract concept. It means to take an existing website and make modifications to is so that it is easier to use.

In some cases it means removing things so as to help streamline it. In other cases, it might mean adding items to help explain different items as well as to improve the flow of the site.

The first step in website redesign for usability is to determine what the issues with the site are. This could be in any of the following categories:

●     The navigation of the site very complicated, with the links seemingly ambiguous.

●     The text does not go into enough depth.

●     The explanations are too technical, or include too much extraneous information.

●     The graphics add clutter to the site, confusing visitors.

●     The site gives an imposing feel, either because of the lack of design or the colors used.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but what should become apparent is the underlying principle of examining the sites content from the eyes of the consumer.

The next step is to determine the appropriate remedy for the problem. Here, you need to employ some creativity to mete out a solution. At the same time, you should not go overboard, since this might confuse your visitors, not help clarify things. The solution: come up with an eye catching remedy that strives for simplicity, promotes the product, and maintains clarity.

The final step is to test. Ask the different members of your company to see if they like the idea, or if it enhances the site. If they like a feature, then go ahead and implement it. If there seems to be recurring concerns about an issue, then you need to revise and help address that problem.

Redesign might be a time consuming project, but in the end, the results will prove to be both worth the work and the wait.

Additional Resources:

4 Tips for a Successful Website Redesign

Website Redesign: Making it Usable

Redesign your Website One Button at a Time

Possibly, one of the hardest tasks for a website designer is the mission of developing an easy to use website.

We live in an age where an increasing amount of business is done online.

With the volume of Internet traffic at an astounding level, it is immensely important that customers are able to use a site that is easily navigable and does not take a lot of time to figure out where one needs to go.

There are several universal guidelines that can be employed, which will help to insure that your business produces a website that is both esthetically pleasing and capable of getting the job done.

• The most important question to ask is “If I incorporate this into my website, will it enhance my product’s message or will it detract from it? If you cannot answer this question with an affirmative yes, then do not put it into the website.
• The next question that you will need to ask is, “Does all of the information that I want to incorporate into my website fit well together?” If the answer is yes, then you are in great shape, but if the answer is no, then you need to reevaluate the situation. The website needs to integrate effectively or else it will be ineffective.
• Once you have settled on content, then you need to analyze the setup. Here, you need to ask the question “Is everything so straight forward that no explanation whatsoever is required?” This is extremely important, since you will not have the chance to stand by each customer as they go through the site and explain to them all of the nuances and what they need to do in order to get the most out of their visit.
• The final question that you need to ask is “Does the final website design  make a convincing case for your merchandise?” This is the most pivotal question, since a no means you need to rework everything. However, an answer of no should not be interpreted as needing to go back to the drawing board: it simply means you need to reevaluate the layout and fix whatever doesn’t look good.

The key to succeeding in this endeavor is to develop a website that is well thought out and carefully put together. The more methodical you are in constructing your website the better. Customers will label yours as an easy to use website, and be happy doing business with you.

Additional Resources:

Web Redesign: Making it Usable

No Thinking Allowed: Designing A Website for Usability

We’ve all visited websites that seemed to fight us every step of the way as we looked for a piece of information, and we can agree that the goal is to avoid creating a site like that.

The key to creating an easy to use website is helping the customer accomplish his goals while not asking him to think about the process. He should be able to take the natural next step and find himself exactly where he wanted to be. Here are some tips to make it happen.

Navigation

Whether you choose drop-down menus, cascading menus, or static menus, the key is to keep them consistent across every page of your website. In an easy to use website, navigation bars should look the same, be in the same place, and operate in the same way.

In designing a navigational system, think about how to make it easy and intuitive for your visitors. Your navigation should use words that are familiar to your visitors. Terms should be simple to understand, consistent and clear.

Load Time

Patience may be a virtue, but it’s not a characteristic that web users have in abundance. A slow loading website will frustrate visitors and have them clicking away. You can speed up your load time by reducing the size of images, eliminating flash animations, and opting for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) rather than tables, frames, or images.

We use Google Webmaster tools to look at our website’s load times. It gives you a chart with a history of your website’s load time, which makes it easy to see how your website is performing.

Readability

Studies show that dark text on light background is much easier to read than light text on dark background. Black doesn’t have to be your color of choice, but the darker the color on a white background, the easier it will be for all visitors to read.

Use white space to make a website easier to read. Sub-headings, bullet points and paragraphs that consist of 3-4 sentences at the most will generate more white space and make the text appear less dense and easier to read.

Search

If your site lends itself to a search feature, use one. Just make sure that it works as intended and that it can recognize misspellings and commonly used terms that may be different from the specific terms you have on your website. If your search doesn’t perform well, it’s better to remove it until you can tweak the problems.

An easy to use website must revolve around the customer’s needs. Visitors don’t like to be challenged by a website, if the information they need isn’t easy to find, visitors will click away. A website that is simple, intuitive, and easy to use will reward you with happy visitors and higher conversion rates.

- The Get Elastic blog from Elastic Path Software compiled a list of 5 tips for leveraging analytics during the holiday season while minimizing your time spent.in their recent Analyze This: 5 Analytics Tips for the Holiday Season post

- What makes people press the back button, shortly after visiting your website? Why do they bail out so quickly? And what can you do about it? Econsultancy answer those and other questions with 25 reasons why I’ll leave your website in 10 seconds

- HubSpot offers up 12 Solutions to Ecommerce Sites’ Biggest Marketing Challenges providing responses to some additional questions that were asked during their recent website optimization webinar for Ecommerce websites

- The folks over at Search Engine People created a quick checklist to remind us why you should never forget about The Importance of Web Usability containing 13 essential tips for website usability

- InternetMarketing.Net’s 5 Most Important Metrics You Need to Consider offers insights into what web analytics metrics to trust so you can narrow your focus, a helpful resource to find out what numbers to consider important for SEO and Conversion Optimization

Now that you have a list of lists to add to your to-to list, that will cover it for this week. If you have any conversion-related tips, suggestions, or resources you’d like to share please leave us a comment below and please feel free to suggest topics that you would like to see covered in future Conversionator posts.